The Empire Chronicles, Book One: The Enemy
by Qazsedcft
Summary: A mighty empire far in the future, unchallenged in living memory  which goes a bloody long way now , is under threat from a mysterious source. Its greatest mind and advantage is comatose, its Emperor refuses to acknowledge the threat and  cont. inside
1. Chapter 1

Intro

A mighty empire far in the future, unchallenged in living memory (which goes a bloody long way now), is under threat from a mysterious source. Its greatest mind and advantage is comatose, its Emperor refuses to acknowledge the threat and its people are growing restless. Into this step The Lord Administrator (One of the three oldest and most powerful men in the universe regardless how well he's aged ;), Claudia Larek (A young mind reader on the border planet of Zal'lth), Mira Spear (The legendary Immortal Pirate Queen of the Gap. Last pirate in the universe ever since she barely escaped the destruction of her ship 'Black Velvet' which took the entire crew to their deaths) and Q62 (An artificial intelligence in a human body who unknowingly holds the key to saving the universe at the cost of his own life.)

**Warning!**

This is, strictly speaking, not a fanfic of anything. I was just severely bored of putting my stories on my fictionpress account.


	2. Chapter 2

The Lord Administrator woke in a cold sweat, instincts honed by an eternity of survival telling him that today was a day he would have to be prepared for. He immediately closed his eyes, accessed his calendar, and discovered to his surprise and slight unease that there was nothing scheduled.

With a groan he sat up and ran a hand through his curled hair, several inches in length and a dull nut brown in coloration. The sheet beneath which he slept for modesty's sake fell down, exposing an impressive torso which was hard with muscle and yet, still fairly slim. His chest was crossed with the few scars he had chosen to keep and as he lifted his face it was revealed in the hard white light that it too bore the marks of old wounds, although less severe. In the middle of his forehead, running diagonally down through his left eye and continuing to his jawline was a thin white line, the remnants of a fearsome cut which seemed somehow to have left the eye itself unharmed. Another scar which was shorter but slightly ragged and had obviously been a wider wound ran from beneath his nose to his upper lip.

He opened eyes a shade of icy blue and stood, tossing the sheet off himself and crossing the stark white room he occupied, furnished only with a desk, his bed and a cabinet in the wall, to open the cabinet and begin to dress himself. He knew that it was now considered old fashioned to dress manually but he felt he had earned the right to be slightly old fashioned after the first several millennia he had lived. Pulling black pants over legs equally as muscled as the rest of him, he wondered if perhaps he could, just once, follow the Grand Emperors example and wear something bright and gaudy. Immediately he discounted this notion as one of pure fancy and utterly ridiculous. He was after all the Lord Administrator, commander of the most elite fighting and espionage force in the Empire and eccentricity did not send the message he wished.

Slipping on the black coat and hood that was the standard uniform of the Administration, imprinted with the tiny calligraphic A which was his emblem, he turned and walked over to the two doors leading out of his room, side by side. The first led out into a corridor, which he disdained as unnecessary and a waste of his admittedly abundant time. The second was twin to the first in every respect except for the small fact that when opened it led to a perfect white blankness which he stepped through disinterestedly, the spectacle so everyday that he literally no longer noticed it.

Emerging from a similarly blank door he was immediately confronted, to his mild approval, with two Administration trainees standing in rigid combat pose facing him with weapons drawn and held at their sides. They stood aside silently to let him pass and he walked the short corridor down to the lobby of the Administration itself.

He crossed the enormous white room at a leisurely pace, making for a corridor at the far end. Along the way he opened internal communication with the Lobby Supervisor. "I hope you haven't given those kids warning devices for when I'm coming?" He asked sternly. The Supervisor sent a reply brimming with silent amusement "No, what we did was start threatening to flog them if they relaxed on duty." The Lord Administrator suppressed a smile and continued on his way.

Reaching the corridor after twenty minutes quick walking he made his way down to a waiting blank doorway and stepped through, traversing thousands of miles in an instant to the Administration Lecture Hall, roughly three eighths of the way across the surface of the oversized, free drifting planet the Administration was based upon. He quickly accessed his clock and sighed, breaking into a sprint which was nonetheless dignified in order to make it to the podium in time for the beginning of his lecture.

He reached the centre of the gigantic hall, a circular raised platform of gleaming black metal with a podium at the centre and slowed. Climbing the steps he took his place in front of the podium and waited a further two minutes for everybody to arrive, making certain that his speaking time had come before beginning to speak in a clear and simple tone which was carried by vibration throwers to the very top of the stands around him (Designed through the work of the Imperial Science Department to seat billions of students without ever reaching maximum capacity).

"The Administration has innumerable roles in the day-to-day management of the Empire. These may appear to be its function, the fulfilment of these duties. They are however merely a series of jobs that it performs, the true purpose of the Administration as a whole revolves around this core understanding and please note that I say understanding rather than belief because it is not something we believe but something we know." He paused here. The speaking had stopped completely the instant he had begun but pausing periodically to allow the students time to process the information was essential. "Humanity and indeed, sentient life as a whole, is dangerous to itself. Intelligence quite often precludes common sense and invariably, the little intelligence gifted to most sentient species, humans included, proves to be in some ways worse than no sentient thought at all." He paused again, looking in a circle to face all parts of the viewing strip which projected his image in front of every student in the hall, giving the impression he was meeting their eyes.

"For this reason, the Administration exists to protect them from themselves. We are spies and assassins, we are the most elite military force in the universe, we spread propaganda, suppress it, depose tyrants, and bring them to power and ALL" he said, his voice rising with force "to ensure the continued function and integrity of the Grand Empire. We are here to keep the great chaotic miasma that is life from tearing itself apart and if any of you have idealisms which conflict with this then disillusion yourselves of them now!" The Lord Administrator finished speaking and silently let out a breath, instantly becoming calm. He continued on to detail some of the general duties of individual Administration agents, along with how they were expected to behave and act.

As his lecture drew to a close he finished by reminding the collective student body that while the Administration _had_ accomplished some truly amazing things and that because of a shortage in numbers all of the students would see action, not all tasks they would be expected to perform were glorious and at times would seem entirely unsavoury. He then allowed the students to ask several questions, mainly to make certain that everything he said was fully clarified and also in order to seem slightly less distant.

The Lord Administrator's speaking time drew near to its end and he stopped the questions with a single thought, tapping one finger on the podium to return attention to him. As the students immediately silenced themselves he spoke once again "I have one final announcement. You are all familiar with your curriculum but I am going to make a request that you make a small further study in engineering." As the students looked on in puzzlement he nodded "The reason is this, the Competition has been due to occur for some time and I believe it will be shortly after you graduate. For those of you unfamiliar with the Competition history there are some incomplete records stored on the database of the Grand Emperor's fortress, I trust you all know how to hack it."

The Competition was a long standing agreement between two of the three Founders of the Empire, the Master of Sciences and the Lord Administrator. It was to the effect that every three centuries the Master of Sciences could choose to instigate the Competition, at which time the Science Department and the Administration would communicate, discover which technologies they had developed in the last century were comparable with each other and then compete them against each other on the fortress of the Grand Emperor. The reason the records of the last competition were incomplete was due to the nature of the final event, something which was impossible to record or even control properly. Still, fatalities were always kept to a minimum and injuries almost equally so.

The unfortunate fact of the matter was that due to the nature of the Administration, all technologies it developed tended to have a common theme. Due to this, the only technologies used in the Competition were either spying devices or weaponry. Naturally the larger weaponry was tested elsewhere but the personnel-based technology was all tested in the Fortress. This always irritated the Grand Emperor but he had never been able to address the problem as he relied heavily upon both the departments and the founders who ran them.

In the past few millennia the Competition had decreased in tension and the Administration had gained an unprecedented advantage, winning four of the last six hands down. This suited the Grand Emperor just fine as it meant less problems during the Competition. The Lord Administrator however was growing worried now, having realized that the cause was in fact, the Master of Sciences losing interest. For nearly five thousand years now the Master had been reclusive, not making direct contact with anyone, simply arranging drop sites for data and sending surrogates in his place for the Competition. The Master of Sciences had reserved and did indeed regularly exercise the right to not appear for contact (excluding wartime, when it was compulsory that he take a more active role) but he had _always_ shown up for Competitions.

The general populace believed that the Imperial Science Department was run autonomously to the Master of Sciences, that his presence within it was just a formality and he made no real difference in it's function. After all, regardless of his age he was only one man and such a Department, made up of billions of talented visionaries, was surely greater than one man. The other two founders, along with the Council of Advisers and several highly privileged individuals, were aware that he did in fact make a significant difference. Countless aeons of curiosity and discovery, along with a burning need to be the best and a willingness to augment himself in unimaginable ways had turned the Master of Sciences into more of a raw force than a man. In short, he was an enormous advantage to the central power of the Empire and the Administrator felt uneasy letting him drift away.

There was one more aspect to the Administrator's worry, one that provided the final piece to the distinct essence of his concerns. The Master of Sciences and the Lord Administrator had been boyhood friends. They, along with the Grand Emperor, had built the Empire from scratch (after several embarrassing failures) and had always remained on good terms. Now the Master seemed to have broken all contact and as much as he wished to believe otherwise, even with all his enormous maturity and age, the Administrator felt slighted by it.

As he stepped down from the podium, the Administrator made up his mind. He decided to wait until the Competition and if the Master of Sciences did not show himself, seek him out.

**Okay, first chapter done. Next chapter I think we'll introduce Mira.**


End file.
